Gram (prev. Toncoin) Price

The Open Network (TON) is a cryptocurrency launched in 2018. It functions as a sovereign layer-1 general-purpose blockchain for smart contracts and decentralised tokens.

The platform tackles the endemic user experience barriers that keep mainstream internet users confined to Web2. By embedding a TON-based wallet directly inside Telegram in September 2023, the network gained an instant distribution channel to the messenger’s hundreds of millions of monthly active users. No separate seed phrase, no browser extension. That’s the wedge.

TON operates on its own blockchain using a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. Validators stake Toncoin to propose and attest blocks, maintaining finality across the ledger.

Toncoin circulates as a native asset on TON’s sovereign chain, while wrapped implementations adhere to ERC-20 on Ethereum and BEP-20 on Binance Smart Chain. This cross-chain presence, augmented by an open source repository with 3,953 GitHub stars, demonstrates an architecture optimized for composability rather than isolation.

Nikolai Durov, Telegram’s co-founder, originally envisioned the project in 2018 as the Telegram Open Network and raised $1.7 billion via two private token sales for the ‘Gram’ cryptocurrency. The U.S. SEC’s enforcement action in 2020 forced Telegram to dissociate, refund investors, and cede the codebase to a community-formed TON Foundation. Under that independent stewardship, the chain shed its Telegram prefix and launched peer-to-peer payments through the @wallet bot in April 2022. A year later, Telegram formally endorsed TON as its Web3 infrastructure partner; native Tether then deployed on the network in April 2024.

The initiative’s undercurrent aims at a genuinely open internet—an infrastructural backbone where any application can run without centralised gatekeeping. It extends the Telegram philosophy of encrypted communication into the realm of programmable value, seeking to collapse the distance between chat threads and financial settlement.

Inside the protocol, Toncoin is the unit of computation and staking collateral. It pays for every state transition, from a simple token transfer to complex dApp interactions, while validators must lock a minimum threshold of Toncoin to earn block rewards. The token’s inelastic demand arises from this gas mechanism, which mirrors computational resource consumption across the network.

Validators stake Toncoin and harvest emissions as compensation for block production. Users hold it to interact with decentralised exchanges, deploy NFT collections, or send value via the Telegram wallet bot. Traders and arbitrageurs also use Toncoin as a bridge between the native stablecoin flows of Tether’s USDT on TON and external liquidity pools.

Toncoin has an unlimited supply, with no fixed maximum ceiling. The total supply stands at 5,168,819,847.18 tokens. Currently, 2,492,790,054.44 are in circulation. With a market capitalization of $3,280,720,912, The Open Network ranks #33 among all cryptocurrencies.